All posts tagged "Healthcaresanitation"

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Kaiser Permanente agreed to a $49 million settlement this month after state and local law enforcement found the health care giant disposed of confidential patient information, hazardous waste and medical waste including blood and body parts in regular trash streams. “We saw bodily fluids and body parts that should not have been in the public waste stream,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a news conference Friday. “The settlement requires Kaiser to take significant steps and spend money to invest in preventing unlawful disposals from happening again in the fut......

NEW YORK -- Have a runny rose? Cough? Headache? It might be a summer surge in COVID cases hitting New York City. City and state data shows the disease is on the rise, and experts say the uptick should be a warning to New Yorkers that the pandemic is not over yet. Driven possibly by indoor, air-conditioned gatherings and perhaps fading immunity to variants, the summer surge has pushed the number of COVID-related hospitalizations up from 4.41 hospitalizations per 100,000 residents to 10.22 per 100,000 in the middle of the month, the latest available data. Dr. Jessica Justman, an infectious disea......

CHICAGO — Across the country, marshes, swamps and bogs quietly soak up flood water and filter pollutants. Ecologists agree they are one of the best natural defenses against climate change. But after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, more than half of the country’s 118 million acres of wetlands, according to estimates from the environmental firm Earthjustice, will effectively no longer have federal protection from developers and polluters. Illinois, which has lost 90% of its wetlands since 1818, is among the more vulnerable states with no state-level protections for wetlands on private proper......